


underground, underneath, and deeper yet

by AptlyNamed



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood Magic, Body Horror, Eldritch, Gen, Magical Realism, the power of friendship forgiveness and dark magicks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 01:57:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19097428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AptlyNamed/pseuds/AptlyNamed
Summary: A dark god, gone a step too far. Two girls with a chance to stop it or die trying.





	underground, underneath, and deeper yet

**Author's Note:**

> ahh a friend of mine put together a writing challenge thing a while ago. we were all given the same starting paragraph and told to write whatever we wanted based off of that. this was mine!  
> (god that was a little over two years now holy shit)

**There's a crackling in the air as the branches overhead whip back and forth in the wind. Dry leaves shatter under foot. The two friends tremble as they hurry through the the last of the daylight, clouds rolling overhead. The past is behind them; they can never go back. One foot in front of the other into the future is all that's left.**

 

“Why, Anne, why, why,” One of the girls chants as she has for the past two hours. Anne grits her teeth. Her friend isn’t looking for answers, not right now. Katelyn’s eyes are glazed and there is no outward emotion on her tearstained face. Her voice is the only sign that she’s not completely catatonic, and Anne wishes it weren’t. The tone is nothing like the friend she’s known since they were both in diapers. It’s the sound of both a creature and a child; a newborn monster. 

No.

Anne grits her teeth again, hard enough she fancies she can hear them crack. There’s no time for doubt. As the storm builds overhead so too does the cloying static taste of magick at the back of Anne’s teeth. Thunder rumbles like a living thing and they no longer have any time for hysterics, either.

Anne roughly shoves her friend into the hollow of a tree. She’s still bleeding from the sigils she’d carved into her skin, so she presses the blood into the tree bark. Forcing the tree to protect them briefly takes but a second.

“Katelyn,” Anne snarls and smacks her. “ _ Katelyn.” _ Katelyn’s eyes focus, but remain blank and emotionless. Anne swallows around a hard rock of regret and grief. “We don’t have time for this,” she bites out. “You don’t have time for this. I didn’t save you so-”

Katelyn’s laugh startles out of her like the beginning of a forest fire. “Save me? Anne, do you know what I can hear now? See now? Taste now? Do you understand what you’ve done?”

Anne’s eyes burn with tears she can’t- won’t-  _ can’t _ shed. “Katelyn-”

“I can hear things that ought to be dead- I can hear gods that ought to be dead. I can hear them moving, laughing. I can see the death in all things. I can see rot in you. I can see dust and creeping, hungry things out the corner of my eyes. I can taste eternity, I can feel the shape of it on my tongue. I can feel, especially, the dark leeching into me. I can feel it  _ eating  _ me. Anne, what have you done?”

Anne swallows and sets her jaw. “Welcome to the school of dark magicks, necromancy and blood magick sold separately. In other words, I gave you my family’s gift.”

Katelyn’s brow furrows, then creases more, and suddenly she’s keening in pain, curling in on herself with her hands clenched on her forehead. As quickly as the pain came, it leaves again. When Katelyn tentatively removes her hands from her forehead, a reptilian eye blinks with its second eyelid.

“Yeah, that can happen.” Anne says tiredly.

Katelyn blinks her eyes in an unsettlingly unsynchronized pattern. “Why didn’t you just let me die?” She asks, her voice distantly curious.

Anne snorts without amusement. “You thought it’d let you die? No, it likes- no, it doesn’t like. Its function is suffering. When it found my ancestor centuries back, it didn’t kill them. It gave them the family gift.”

“Just for the fun of it?” Katelyn asks.

“It doesn’t have fun. It just is.” Anne rubs her forehead. “And, no. Not just because. It needed a tether in order to effect this plane of existence.”

“You mean-?”

“Katelyn, allow me to introduce the patron god of my family line.” Anne says. “It’s hungry, it’s an asshole, and I need your help to kill it.”

Katelyn blinks slowly, digesting. “Alright,” She says. “But after this we’ll need to reevaluate our friendship.”

“...Fair enough.” Anne concedes, her throat tightening. “Ready?”

Katelyn nods. The wind, held at bay no longer, rips at the tree. Anne grabs Katelyn’s wrist again, and the girls take off running. The wind tries to tear at their skin, but Anne spits a blood charm and it slides past them instead, docile as a summer breeze. She bares her teeth in some mockery of a grin, feels the dark slip and slide between her teeth. 

“Right,” She says as they run. “Remember those dark, horrible, ought to be dead gods you can hear?”

 

\---

 

Apparently, ought to be dead gods prefer hiding in dark unreachable places. Luckily Anne knows how to cast a path, as unpleasant as that path is. The spell requires nothing but blood and a brief incantation, and then a door seeps into hazy existence. In the girls step, and freezing dark enfolds them. The walls of the path nearly burn with cold, so the girls brush only their fingertips to it to keep themselves oriented. 

Stumbling through the cold aching dark, Anne- try as she might- can’t get Katelyn’s words out of her head.

“You know this doesn’t necessarily make you a monster, right?” Anne asks as they feel their way through the path. She senses more than sees Katelyn swallow a laugh.

“Right, because the third eye is just so normal.” Katelyn says sarcastically.

Anne bristles. “A monster isn’t something that looks different.” 

“Isn’t it? The unknown, the different, the things people avoid eye contact with. Things that make people wonder what they’re capable of.”

“That doesn’t sound monstrous.” Anne says, scowling.

Katelyn barks a laugh. “Enlighten me, then. What is a monster?”

“Something that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.” Anne replies instantly. “Something that no other word can capture but monster. A thing with the intent to harm and no intention of ever stopping.” Anne pauses, weighing her words. Softly, she says, “A monster is a type of being, not an appearance. Katelyn, you could never be a monster.”

“What you’ve done to me is changing me,” Katelyn replies, just as softly. “How can you be sure?”

“Gut feeling.” Anne says. “Besides, I know you.” 

Katelyn makes to snort but Anne cuts her off, low and serious. “I know you.”

They walk the rest of the way in quiet, the cold not digging quite as deep as before.

 

\---

 

At the end of the path, a door stands. Neither girl makes any move to open it. The phantom edges of the door move slightly, rhythmically; pulsing. 

“A god, you said.” Katelyn says. “What does that even mean?”

“You want me describe what a god is?” Anne asks drily. 

“You want me to try and kill an incorporeal concept that I don’t understand?”

“Alright, alright.” Anne thinks back to her fuzzy memories of her childhood lessons. “It’s- you get the concept of void, right? Complete and utter emptiness. And- imagine the universe like it’s crumpled fabric, with lots of folds. Where we live, that’s a flat area of the fabric. And the void is tucked into the folds. Not quite separate but still apart from the rest of us. Because it’s attached to us, sometimes pieces from our flat place float into the void folds. Not a lot, but enough that the void grabs on-”

“Sorry, what?” Katelyn interrupts. “Are you saying the void is sentient?”

“Kind of.”

“Kind of? How can sheer, empty nothingness be kind of sentient?”

Anne shrugs sheepishly. “Mortal languages don’t have the words to describe it right. It’s nothingness, with intent. That’s the concept existence depends on. Nothingness, in any form, desires to become something; to be filled.”

Katelyn stares. “The void wants to die?”

“That’s one theory.” Anne admits. “Another is that it wants to ascend.”

Katelyn visibly shakes herself. “Okay. Alright. Third eyes, void that thinks, whatever. So stuff comes into the void- what kind of stuff?”

“It varies- maybe a concept like justice, maybe a strain of music, maybe even something physical like a flower.”

“Like a person?”

Anne stiffens. “In one legendarily horrible case, yes. It’s irrelevant right now.”

“Okay then.” Katelyn raises an eyebrow, but gestures for her to continue. 

“So the void grabs these things and latches on. And between the seam of void and existence, a god is created. They embody whatever things facilitated their creation, but every god carries a bit of void in them. A bit of that hungry, reaching nothingness, and that is why all gods seek to be worshipped and none can be trusted.” Anne recites.

“That’s... fun.” Katelyn says. “So, what’s this god made of and how do we kill it?”

“I don’t know- but you can.” Says Anne.

“What?”

“You can figure out what it’s made out of.” Anne continues earnestly. “The ritual- what I gave you- it’s manifested in such a way that you can see the void. You can see the seam. If you can tell me where it is, I can separate void from existence and kill the god.”

“Anne.” Katelyn’s voice is flat. “What exactly did you do to me?”

Anne’s eyes flit between Katelyn’s before glancing away. “In- the darker gods, like this one, they’re more void than thing. And they desperately want to be filled. It was trying to make you one of its worshippers, so it was pulling on your soul, your essence, trying to make it overproduce.”

“It was trying to give my soul cancer?”

Anne doesn’t look up. “Essentially. Living with your essence overproducing would be like living as if your entire being was a constant open wound. Everything would hurt, until you prayed or made an offering, and the god ate the extra essence. It was attracted by your soul- it’s so bright and colourful-”

“What. Did. You. Do.” Katelyn shakes with a mixture of anger and sick fear.

Anne’s voice drops to a hesitant whisper. “It isn’t attracted to void. It’d already scooped out some of your soul to get at the part it needed to corrupt. So I just- I just put some void in instead.”

Abruptly, Katelyn sits. There’s nothing but the sound of their breathing. 

“You could’ve just killed me.” Katelyn says finally. 

“Why do you keep thinking that I could kill you?” Anne returns. “You’re like a sister to me. I couldn’t.”

“Not even a mercy kill?” Katelyn sneers. “It amputated some of my soul and you put fucking sentient void in me. Why couldn’t you find some fucking pity and kill me?”

Anne snaps. Sneering back, she says, “Don’t you remember? I gave you the family curse. That cold, hollow, twisting feeling? I know it. I knew damn well what I was doing to you- and I know nearly all of my family would still choose life, even with that. Don’t you get it?” Anne’s face changes, desperation replacing anger. She grasps Katelyn’s hands tightly. “It’s a curse, but not a killing one. Not if you live in defiance of it.”

Katelyn studies Anne. Slowly, her hands tighten back. “Together, then?” She says, and it’s not absolution or an apology, but it’s a start. Anne blinks tears back, nodding. 

“Alright,” Says Katelyn, and Anne can see a piece of her mischievous friend in her smile. “Let’s kill a god.”

 

\---  

 

The door handle feels unpleasantly leathery and warm, and Anne is determinedly not thinking about it. Unsurprisingly it opens to a darkened clearing. Surprisingly there is a cottage sitting in the middle of it, chimney smoking cheerfully.

“That’s pretty ominous.” Katelyn remarks.

“Yup,” Anne agrees, “Let’s go inside.”

As the girls approach, the cottage slowly gains more details. Green trimming, whitewashed walls, bloodstains on the door. Katelyn abruptly stops.

“Oh my god,” She breathes. “That’s my gramma’s house.”

“You’re sure?”

Katelyn looks vaguely ill. “It looks exactly like when I last saw it.” She stumbles forward and Anne follows close behind. 

As they get closer, police tape appears around the house. Broken pots spill their dirt and plants over a meticulously maintained walkway. The door looks more and more destroyed the closer they get, like something large and angry had forced its way in.

“Katelyn, what happened to your gramma?” Anne asks with forced calm. 

She can see the whites around the entirety of Katelyn’s eyes. “Something ate her.”

_ And she was delicious.  _ A heavy presence winds around their ears like smoke, and the god is there in the doorway. Anne squints; it’s painful to look at it, like it’s sitting just out of focus on a smeared lens. If it were in focus, she has the feeling it would be infinitely larger and intrinsically wrong. 

Anne blinks, and its hands are in her hair.  _ Yes,  _ it muses.  _ I know you- One of Joan’s get. I’d recognize the texture anywhere.  _ It slips its fingers through her hair, petting her. With a twist of its wrists, its hands settle underneath her skin.  _ Thank you for bringing back my meal,  _ it purrs.  _ Spoiled as it m- _

Anne wretches out a word in a language born of burning and the god screams. Anne screams with it, skin tearing. In an instant it’s snarling back in the doorway and in another it’s flayed its moving skin apart to stretch across the empty expanse of the sky. Like a windstorm, it howls.

“What do you see?” Anne shouts at Katelyn over the god, ignoring for now the chunks of her it ripped out.

“The seam- I think it’s corroded!” Katelyn yells back, fear in her voice. Overhead the god laughs.  

Anne curses, breathless and terrified. Then, she’s still. It’s quiet inside her head. Time slows.

“Plan B, then,” Anne says. She feels for the scarred stitches inside herself that hold the void separate and yet still attached to the rest of her. Ancient magick, refined by her family over centuries so that they could flourish with the curse. 

She removes them in the space between heartbeats, and the world explodes.

 

\---

 

Gods are a touch more complex than current mortal understanding. Not every meeting of void and substance becomes life; universes, planets, ideas- these are also products of void and thing. Sometimes the void just eats the thing, and continues on being void. When Anne let void and herself meet, she was prepared to be devoured or painfully used to become something else.

However. 

The void isn’t a conscious being. Yet this piece had been a part of Anne for her entire life; when she was conceived so too was this particular void, as goes her family’s gift. It knew her. And again mortal languages fail here, but for lack of a better term it’s  _ fond  _ of her, and that fondness outweighs its desire for being. 

When the stitches are cut, it doesn’t throw itself at her soul. It throws itself away from her, and toward the closest nearby beings. Toward a seam where ugly existence has overgrown. Toward another being with the strangest soul it’s ever seen.

To an extent, the void can be merciful. 

 

\---

 

The god is angry. The god is livid. Anne did not expect to live to see it. It expands, too immense to ever be comprehended, and throws itself at her. Anne takes a startled breath, and the dark floods into her mouth and nose. It consumes- the lowgrade chewing of the family gift was nothing compared to this devouring. 

She tries to breathe, but the dark only goes in deeper. She tries to breathe- she tries to breathe-

A scream shatters the dark. Katelyn, Anne thinks muzzily. 

The dark howls back, furious and writhing. Anne slams into the ground as though thrown gracelessly by an angry toddler. The hole inside her where void once lived is an angry, seeping wound, and there like maggots pieces of the god stay. Over the sound of her blood in her ears, she can hear it laughing through her mouth.

Nails- no, claws sink into her arm and  _ wrench. _ The darkness tears out of her in chunks. Bones snap. Anne blacks out. 

She’s gone for a breath, maybe four, maybe five. She blinks her eyes open to blinding light and the sound of a holy battle. Sounds, sounds like fear and regret and anger, like hot oil splattering, an old woman crying, a cut off fragment of a nursery rhyme. Sounds of life, of living, made into weaponry. Brighter bursts of light flash randomly. Anne can’t see Katelyn, and dread pools in her gut.

One of her arms, three of her ribs, and both of her ankles are shattered, but that’s fine. She only needs one arm. Gritting her teeth, Anne pulls her broken body over the battlefield. The decimated landscape is a sea of cratered not-earth, with creeping creatures wriggling out of the seams. One leeches onto Anne’s broken arm; she pushes down a swell of sick horror/pain when she feels its millions of tiny teeth attach. 

Another clutches to her knee with sharp, burning fingers, another to her ankle. She ignores them all. 

A larger creature coalesces out of the cracked landscape and pushes its way through the littler beings. 

_ Rest with us,  _ it coos, a soft shadow caressing her cheek.  _ Come, lay down. _

Anne leans into the shadow, briefly closing her eyes. The creature coos again and draws her closer to its mouth, a slathering tongue hidden in between the shifting shadows of its form. 

“Unum.” Anne lets the incantation slither off her tongue, grinning savagely when the smaller creatures attached to her shriek and meld into her wounds. The speaking creature condenses and explodes. 

She hauls herself up and out of the crater on aching bones, and picks a bit of the creature out of her hair. She’s close enough to the battle now that the light is hot against her skin. Somewhere in the light, a tv crackles and the god snarls, vicious and triumphant. 

Anne rips a piece off of the creature she fused to her arm and makes a circle, feeding it the dramatic shadows that the intense light creates until it’s roughly the size of a baseball. She winds up, and throws it on the ground. Darkness bursts up in a shockwave.

Anne stumbles back, but the ball served its purpose; she disengaged the fighters, and enough of the light was swallowed the she can see. Blinking spots out of her eyes, she sees Katelyn kneeling on the battlefield. Her heart sinks. 

The void has grown in Katelyn, and the new seam in her had reacted to the god as Anne feared. Most of it has become external by way of twisting her form. Katelyn has two more eyes bubbling out of her neck. Her arms drip skin, blood and bone like wax, with things twisting and twining just underneath the fluid skin. She’s also grown nearly a meter taller, and her legs are oddly jointed and too long. 

“Katelyn!” She calls, and suddenly Katelyn is crouched right in front of her. Her heart sinks further. 

“I don’t have long.” Katelyn pants out between gritted teeth. Her voice is a cacophony of different tones and voices. Anne holds Katelyn’s face between her hands.

“I’m so sorry.” Her voice breaks.

Katelyn manages a sardonic grin. “So this is what happens, when a person becomes the seam?”

“The start of it, yes.” Anne says, mouth full of ash.

“Well, what the fuck.” Katelyn says philosophically. She suddenly pushes herself forward, pressing her forehead to Anne’s. The eyelashes on the eye there tickle. Anne swallows, accepting this absolution. 

After a breath, Katelyn pushes away. “Change of plans,” She says, and in the dissonance of those many voices Anne hears something primal and laughing. “Let’s eat this motherfucker.”

Anne manages a watery grin at that. “As you like.” She says, and summons daggers made of dripping blood to her hands. The god, twisting around the edge of the hidden place, swirls back to face them. It towers, consumes, seemingly endless and endlessly hungry. It lunges at the girls, so small and insignificant to its curling eternity.

It never stood a chance.

 

\---

 

Afterward, a new god and a girl stand watching a sunset. The light from it fractures through the hazy fabric separating worlds, creating a kaleidoscope effect. The girl doesn’t apologize, though her eyes sting in regret.

The new god sighs, picking a bit of void and being from her teeth. “There’s never any going back.” Says the new god, sounding younger than her eldritch appearance would suggest.

“No, there isn’t,” Agrees the girl. She scrubs at her eyes harshly. “But the future can be better. We can make it better.”

“How’s that?” Asks the new god, amused.

The girl juts her chin out. “You looking for a high priestess?”

The new god has many, many eyes, too many to coordinate, but still the girl feels her stare. “... I suppose.” The new god says, voices rough. 

The girl smiles.

Elsewhere in the worlds, a sun rises.


End file.
